Mentioned in an article regarding the cryptocurrency market published recently on CBSNews.com MoneyWatch , a small bright spot for the cryptocurrency future, JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon told Fox Business News he regretted calling bitcoin a "fraud" and threatening to fire employees who traded the digital money. Though Dimon described bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology as "real," he told the business channel he was "not interested that much in the subject at all." "Jamie Dimon's about-face is not surprising since Goldman Sachs (GS) has entered the business of clearing bitcoin futures trades for its clients," said Trevor Gerszt, CEO of CoinIRA, which specializes in digital money, in a statement. "Dimon just has to try to disassociate himself from his previous comments so that he doesn't lose face when JPMorgan inevitably expands its bitcoin operations."

According to Coinmarketcap, the total cryptocurrency market was recently valued over $700 billion, with 1398 cryptocurrencies trading. The growth of the cryptocurrency market is propelled by the transparency and immutability of the distributed ledger technology and benefits such as faster transaction and reduction in total ownership cost. However, the uncertain regulations and standards pertaining to cryptocurrency restrain the growth of this market. Mining is an integral process for the generation, transmission, and validation of transactions in cryptocurrencies. Active Companies from around the market this week include: Puissant Industries, Inc. (OTC: PSSS), Digatrade Financial Corp. (OTC: DIGAF), BTCS Inc. (OTC: BTCS), Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. (TSX-V: BLOC) (OTC: BLKCF), Net Element, Inc. (NASDAQ: NETE)

Puissant Industries, Inc. (OTC: PSSS), a publicly traded energy rich company that uses its resources to develop or acquire high growth companies in industries where maximum profitability can be generated, announced this week that it will begin Cryptocurrency Mining Operations through its wholly-owned subsidiary, American Crypto Mining, Inc. ("American Crypto").

American Crypto's first Cryptocurrency Mining Farm (the "Farm"), estimated to be 50% and 100% operational by the first and second quarters of 2018, respectively, will be equipped with SHA 256 double round hash verification processes and scrypt to validate Bitcoin transactions and provide security for the public ledger of the Bitcoin/Lite coin network. The Bitcoin/Litecoin networks compensate miners for their computational power by releasing newly issued Bitcoin and Litecoin, in addition to transaction fees from validation processes - the more computing power a Farm contributes to the networks, the greater share of its compensation.

With Bitcoin mining measured in hashes per second, American Crypto's first Farm will have an initial hashing scrypt capability at 56,448 Mh/s and Sha-256 at 1,512,000 Gh/s hashing ability, permitting it to mine across a broad spectrum of cryptocurrencies and conduct Bitcoin/Litecoin mining at competitive levels. Puissant's excess electrical capacity of $0.03 per kilowatt hour will provide American Crypto with comparatively low operational/breakeven costs, which Puissant plans to use, in addition to at least 50% of American Crypto's revenues, to construct multiple Crypto Mining Farms.

Mark Holbrook commented, "We are pleased to expand our operations with Cryptocurrency Mining. Based on the current market for hashing ability as of January 8, 2018, scrypt in Litecoin at 10000 Mh/s pays $10,000 month and Sha-256 in Bitcoin at 100,000 Gh/s pays $5,600 month. You can see our first Farm's capability will have a hashing rate of 5.6448 times theses scrypt rates and 15.12 times the sha-256 rates. Puissant's excess electrical capacity alone could enable American Crypto to construct up to 5 more Crypto Mining Farms."

In the industry developments and happenings in the market this week include:

Digatrade Financial Corp. (OTCQB: DIGAF) a digital-asset (Bitcoin) exchange and blockchain development services company this month announced the execution of a technology development contract with No Limits Consulting Limited (DBA: ANX International, ANXPRO, ANX Technologies) to develop the Digatrade Mobile Application for iOS & Android. The following features will be developed for the Digatrade Mobile App; Digatrade home page, portfolio page with account balance display, activities page with transaction records, funding including deposit / withdraw function, trading page with instant liquidity access to Digatrade multi-currency order-book and standalone APK for android users in Chins. The application is expected to go-live Q102018.

Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. (TSX-V: BLOC) (OTC: BLKCF) announced this week it has made a strategic investment of C$2.0 million in Spectra7 Microsystems Inc., a leading provider of high-performance analog semiconductor products for broadband connectivity markets. In November 2017, Spectra7 announced a new product line optimized for blockchain processing data centers. Data Centers focused on blockchain processing are extremely dedicated to network and computational efficiency. Spectra7's BCI-2500 products enable copper cables up to three times the reach of passive copper cables at dramatically lower power levels than alternative solutions.

Net Element, Inc. (NASDAQ: NETE), a global financial technology and value-added solutions group that supports electronic payments acceptance in an omni-channel environment spanning across point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce, and mobile devices, earlier this month announced that it has completed a $7.55 million private placement of restricted common stock and warrants with a New York-based family office that has made several investments in companies with blockchain technology platforms.

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